


Hotel Homicide

by Fire_Sign



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Gen, MFMM Year of Tropes challenge, bottle ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-05 15:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10311734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_Sign/pseuds/Fire_Sign
Summary: For the March Trope Challenge: When Mac's friend is accused of murder after the mysterious death at her hotel, Phryne, Jack, and Mac have three hours to prove her innocence before they lose their evidence forever.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olderbynow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olderbynow/gifts).



> So, I had planned to write this for months and thought it a suitable bottle episode, then realised it contained some of olderbynow's favourite things. "What serendipity!" I crowed, knowing her birthday was this month. (Today, if only technically and due to time zones.) Yeah... it was a much better birthday gift as a 5K epic of snark and feels, instead of whatever-the-heck this turned out to be. It is, however, based on a real death; more on that in the end notes.

Shifting the files from one hand to the other in order to unlock the hotel room door, Jack gave a small mutter of discontent.

“Remind me why I’ve driven three hours for this again?” he asked under his breath, the key giving him some resistance in turning.

“You’re easily led,” Phryne whispered, leaning in so her breath tickled his ear; she smirked as a shiver ran through him, but before she could gloat she caught a glimpse of red hair ascending the stairs and sighed. “And because you’re the only police officer Mac trusts enough for this and you know it.”

The door finally opened, and Jack turned to gesture her inside with a small, knowing smile.

“And if I hadn’t agreed?” he asked, more for the sake of being ornery than any real chance he wouldn’t have.

“This would be a far less official investigation,” Phryne replied, sweeping past him to enter the room first and looked around; the crime scene photographs had made it hard to visualise the space, and she could only hope the change in perspective would help them solve the case.

“Luckily for us,” Mac said, having reached the room, “Jack here is interested in the pursuit of truth, unlike some police officers I could mention.”

Jack didn’t envy the poor officers that had been assigned to the case--his small town counterparts were more equipped to handle sheep rustling than an incredibly odd death and the attendant pressures to make an arrest--but he had to admit that their case was weak. And as it had been a friend of Mac’s that had been charged with murder, he’d been roped into taking over the investigation mere hours before the body was cremated and their evidence lost forever.

It was not, Jack would admit, how he had intended to spend his Saturday.

When all three were inside the room, Phryne snagged the key from Jack’s hand and locked the door behind them. Jack raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged and pocketed the key.

“George Anderson was in this room with the door locked, and now so are we,” she said. “The police are under the mistaken impression that Mary Fairburn, being the proprietor of this hotel and the only one in possession of a key, unlocked said door, beat the naked man to death without leaving a single external mark, and then locked the door as she left. The number of ways this is absurd is in the double digits." She marked each point off with a raised finger. “One: Anderson outweighed Mary by a hundred pounds, easily, yet there is no sign of a struggle despite the nature of his injuries. Two: Estimated time of death was 9 o’clock at night, and Mary was working--with witnesses--from 6 until 11. Three: Anderson was a travelling salesman who was one of Mary’s most regular customers, and they got along perfectly well. There has been no motive established. Four: The door was locked--why would Mary relock the door upon exiting, when doing so would only cast suspicions upon herself? Five: George Anderson was naked, which suggested to the police that he and Mary were in the middle of an assignation, but we have the advantage of knowing May was not that way inclined. Six… well, there is no six as _such_ , but I believe I’ve proven my case.”

“Hardly double digits, Miss Fisher,” Jack said, leaning against a small writing desk and perusing the casefile. “And fails to account for the fact that Miss Fairburn was absent for approximately twenty minutes around nine o’clock, or that the only keys to the room were in this room or on her person at the time.”

It was Mac that spoke up. “I’ve known Mary for years, inspector. You cannot really think there is sufficient evidence to charge her?”

“Of course not,” said Jack, “which is why I’m here. But it does none of us any good if we ignore the unpleasant facts. Miss Fairburn discovered the body the next morning?”

Mac nodded. “He didn’t come to breakfast at his usual time, so Mary knocked on the door. When he didn’t answer, she unlocked it and found him on the floor. He had heart troubles, so she presumed that was the cause and telephoned the local doctor and the police. Which is what everyone believed--”

“Until they opened him up and found his internal organs were practically liquified,” Phryne interjected.

“That’s a slight exaggeration, Phryne,” scolded Mac, “but yes, in essence. There is no obvious cause of this trauma--looking at this autopsy report it is the sort of thing we would expect from high-velocity impact such as a fall from a height or a gunshot wound, but there’s no external signs. Unfortunately that meant the local police decided that it was murder, and I half-expect them to accuse Mary of witchcraft to explain it away.”

“Hmm,” hummed Jack. “Which would be unfortunate, as witchcraft wouldn’t even require her presence in the room.”

“Perhaps she cursed his cow while she was at it,” Phryne retorted, then turned to her friend. “Mac, as unpleasant as this is to contemplate, is there any possibility that Mary is guilty?”

“I’ve been privy to enough of your cases to know that I can’t rule it out. But I really can’t see it, Phryne. Even if she was capable of murder, I can’t see how she could overpower him and not leave a mark.”

“Fair enough. We’ll work from the conclusion that she didn’t--don’t give me that look, Jack, the police approach has clearly not turned up anything of use.”

“What look?” Jack asked, his voice the picture of innocence. “I’m simply reading this report and glanced up when you spoke.”

Phryne rolled her eyes and point towards the clock on the mantelpiece. “We have three hours before the body is released to the crematorium, and with it any chance we have of solving this properly. The room is now exactly as it was when the police arrived, save one detail...” Phryne moved over to the phonograph and started the music. “The guests next door reported music coming from this room until sometime after his death. This should give us an idea of how loud a person could be without being overheard. No lewd comments please, inspector.”

Jack actually laughed. “Believe me, I am entirely focused on this case.”

“Well, turn your attentions to finding another entry or exit for this room. There’s always the possibility that the police overlooked an option.”

“This is a hotel, Miss Fisher, not a castle in a children’s tale. The likelihood of a secret passageway is remarkably slim.”

Phryne looked at him pointedly, then turned and began to examine the room. There was no obvious options--no vents, the windows were locked and impossible to access from the outside, the walls all bordered adjacent rooms or the outside--so she began to examine the shelves and such more closely; perhaps the killer had hidden in the room after the death and escaped in the chaos of finding the body.

“Natural causes have been ruled out, yes?” Jack asked, having gotten the message and examining beneath the bed--it was tall enough that a killer couldn’t have hidden beneath it, but he checked the frame for signs of someone underneath all the same. “There’s really no way that Mr. Anderson had a fit and fell from the bed, or...?”

“The injury pattern doesn’t match,” said Mac from where she too was searching. “Not that it’s stopped the idiotic coroner from declaring cause of death in this case. But no, I can’t see how that would be any more possible that Mary beating him to death without leaving a mark.”

Phryne walked the perimeter of the room, trailing her hand along the wall as she did so. Just behind the door she felt a bump and paused; it was about waist height, so she dropped to her knees for a better view. A small hole had been patched, poorly; she brushed against it firmly and it crumbled, leaving a small hole between the crime scene and the adjacent bedroom. She stuck her finger through, noticing the wallpaper in the other room appeared to have be singed. Turning to follow the line of sight afforded by the position, Phryne realised that it was looking directly at the bed. She hummed.

“What?” Mac asked.

“I’m not sure,” Phryne said, a rather absurd idea running through her mind just out of reach. “Somebody might have been spying on our victim. Who was staying next door?”

Mac rifled through the casefiles, coming up with the relevant witness statements.

“Edward and James O’Connell from Melbourne. Brothers who were here on business.”

“Did they know our victim?”

“They say they never even saw him--they were the ones who reported the music coming from the room, but never spoke with Mr. Anderson. The police could draw no connections between them.”

“We need to speak with them again.”

“It’s a three hour drive to Melbourne, never mind actually contacting them,” observed Jack. “There’s no time.”

Which was a small problem, but one of the benefits of Mary’s hotel was that she had--rather indulgently--put a telephone in every room. Phryne picked it up, requesting that the operator put her through the City South Police Station in Melbourne. Hugh answered the telephoned, and Phryne grinned.

“Just the man for the job,” she trilled.

“Is the inspector there?” Hugh replied.

Phryne rolled her eyes and handed the telephone over to Jack, who had no real idea why Phryne had telephoned, and therefore muttered an order to do as Miss Fisher said before handing it back.

“If you’re very lucky, I’ll not mention that slip to Dot,” Phryne laughed, and could practically see Hugh pale over the telephone line. “I need you to re-interview two of our witnesses, and mention a small hole in the wall between their room and the victim’s. See if you can’t shake loose a little extra information.”

Hugh agreed--probably still a little terrified that Phryne might talk to his wife--and Phryne gave him the details and hung up. Mac and Jack were both watching her with careful consideration.

“Yes?” she asked. “Something you would like to say?”

“Go on then,” Mac prompted, folding her arms, “impress us.”

“Merely a suspicion at the moment,” Phryne said lightly. “And it won’t do to rest on our laurels, so keep searching.”

An hour and a half later, they had exhausted their explorations of the room, had gone over the casefiles twice, and were sufficiently frustrated.

“If you’re so certain that the hole is the key to this case, perhaps we ought to go next door and look there?” Jack suggested, and Phryne shook her head.

“No, not until we hear back from Hugh. It will tell us what we are looking for.”

As if on cue, the telephone rang. Phryne snatcher the receiver up quickly.

“Phryne Fisher speaking,” she said. “Yes, hello Hugh! Have you spoken with our witnesses? And… ah, yes, I thought as much. Yes, I think perhaps you might need to speak with them another time. Let us finish up here and we’ll let you know. Yes, thank you. Goodbye.”

Hanging up, she turned to Mac and Jack.

“Our brothers next door had a pistol that night, and accidentally discharged it into that wall,” she said, motioning with her head. “Horrified, they patched it up and made no connection with a man dying in the same time frame.”

“Normally I would say that is a degree of stupidity that beggars belief, but there was no bullet wound on our victim,” said Mac. “So it was dangerous, but irrelevant to George Anderson’s death.”

“And yet no bullet was found,” Phryne said. “We’ve searched this room, as have the original investigators. Did either of you find so much as a mark that could be caused by a bullet’s ricochet?”

Agreeing that they had not, Mac and Jack waited for her to elaborate.

“I’m still piecing it together,” Phryne said. “And I’m not certain why Mr. Anderson was nude at the time, but I think I almost have it.”

Mac and Jack exchanged a look that could only be described as fondly exasperated, which was really rather rude.

“Perhaps it was martians?” suggested Jack.

Phryne rolled her eyes. “If that’s the sort of shoddy police work you’re coming up with, you’re no longer welcome to borrow from my library.”

“Not even those pieces of particularly artistic merit?” he teased, and damn him for being so… _ohhh_.

“Lie down on the bed,” she ordered, hoping the briskness of the tone would outweigh the absurdity of what she was about to request. This was a ridiculous theory, even for her leaps of logic. “As if you were… taking yourself in hand.”

Jack stared at her blankly, and Mac laughed.

“I believe Phryne here is implying masturbation,” she offered dryly.

The tips of Jack’s ears had gone almost painfully red, and Phryne decided not to tease him. For the moment. This was definitely being brought up when they had more than a few hours left to prove a woman’s innocence

“Indulge me, inspector. It is relevant to the case.”

He obliged, reclining against the pillows and with his legs spread apart. Biting back the urge to make a suggestive comment--if only because she knew she’d never get Jack to reenact events in private if she did so--Phryne tracked the route the bullet would have taken with her eyes.

“I know what happened,” she declared. “I just need to telephone the coroner and confirm it.”

Ignoring the entirely incredulous looks from her companions, Phryne quickly confirmed her suspicions with the coroner. It took less than ten minutes to find the bullet with this new information. Thanking the man, she hung up and turned to Mac and Jack.

“George Anderson’s death was a tragic accident,” she said. “He was enjoying his own company--the music was to cover any sounds, I suspect--when the men in the next room discharged a weapon. The bullet tore through this wall, following this path, and entered… between Mr. Anderson’s legs” --Mac and Jack both winced at the implication-- “and the laceration was overlooked in the folds of skin.”

“For all the emphasis men put on having them, you would think they’d have been more thorough in their examination,” Mac said dryly.

Phryne nodded in agreement. “But once the coroner realised the entry point, he was able to recover the bullet. Mary Fairburn is innocent.”

Mac was relieved, and Jack just shook his head.

“This was a bit much, even for you, Miss Fisher.”

“If it was easy, anybody could do it.”

“You didn’t even need me,” he accused affectionately, stunned once again by the way she worked.

“Of course we did, Jack!” she exclaimed, extracting the key from her pocket to unlock the door. She flashed him a smile over her shoulder. “Someone will have to file the paperwork to get Mary released from custody.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have smoothed out many details for simplicity's sake, but [this really was based on a real case.](http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/05/true-crime-elegante-hotel-texas-murder) The damage from the bullet is due to an effect called cavitation--there's a rather handy explanation with gifs [here](http://scriptmedic.tumblr.com/post/157914768598/hello-script-aunty-do-you-have-anything-on) and [here](http://scriptmedic.tumblr.com/post/155498981791/what-would-the-damagerecovery-process-look-like), but this gif really does explain it all .


End file.
